Leading global deck machinery specialist, ACE Winches has successfully mobilized a 6 point mooring system to anchor the Iron Lady Barge being used on the Brent decommissioning project. The equipment, designed and manufactured by ACE Winches at their global headquarters, Turriff, Aberdeenshire is now in situ and being supported by a team of ACE Winches offshore personnel.

ACE Winches manufacture a range of standard and bespoke drum winches, available in single or double drum configurations. Drum winches are designed to be utilized for hoisting, deployment, mooring and general pulling applications and, depending on the size and power requirement, can be hydraulically, electrically or pneumatically driven.

As part of the Brent Delta decommissioning project the 24,000te platform topside is to be transferred to a 200-metre long barge, the Iron Lady, being moored at the client’s specialist facilities in the North East of England. An ACE 6-Point Mooring system is in place to assist and maintain the positioning of the barge during operations to transfer the platform to the shore side.

The Shell-operated Brent field, located 115 miles north-east of the Shetland Islands, has produced around three billion barrels of oil equivalent since production started in 1976, which is almost 10% of UK production. The Brent Delta topsides, located some 186 km off the north-east coast of Shetland, sat on a three-legged gravity-based structure which stands in 140 m of water.

Richard Wilson, Chief Operational Officer at ACE Winches said: “ACE Winches has proven experience along with a wealth of knowledge and engineering expertise in designing and supplying complex mooring systems that can be used to support heavy lift operations such as this one. During the past 6 months the team at our global headquarters has been working in close partnership with our client to ensure that the mooring solution met their precise specifications.”